Even for a gang member, Ivan Valencia led a particularly precarious lifestyle. He was a commuter. Valencia, 30, was a member of the Temple Street gang, which operates mostly on the southern edge of Silver Lake and Echo Park. He lived seven miles away, on West 55th Street in South Los Angeles -- where five other gangs operated within a quarter-mile of his house. "He was living out of his area," LAPD Capt. Tina M. Nieto said. "People move all the time in Los Angeles.

Officers Keith Linton and Otis Swift stopped their patrol car, rolled down a window and motioned to a hoodie-wearing teenager. In this part of South L.A., such encounters can be tense - or worse. "Hey, Linton. Hey, Swift," the teen said. "How y'all doing?" "Doing good, my man," Linton replied, launching into a conversation about basketball. Similar scenes played out all afternoon as the cops worked their beat in Jordan Downs, a housing project in Watts with a violent reputation and a history of ill will between residents and police.

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre announced Tuesday that the L.A. Bridges gang intervention program will be started at Burbank Middle School in Highland Park. The city-funded L.A. Bridges program targets students and their families at the middle school level in an effort to dissuade them from joining gangs. At least 1,700 youngsters from Burbank Middle School and the surrounding neighborhood will be served by the program. "L.A.

It was Father Gregory Boyle's first invitation to address the Los Angeles Police Commission, and he had something to get off his chest. For a quarter of a century, Boyle has steered boys and girls, and men and women, out of the gang life through Homeboy Industries, which offers job training, counseling, tattoo removal and more. The model Boyle built has been replicated around the country and abroad. Here in Los Angeles, some 120,000 gang members have voluntarily asked Father Boyle for help starting over.

A landmark gang intervention program involving vocational educators and county mental health counselors may soon make its way to the campus of San Clemente High School. In a unanimous vote Monday, the Capistrano Unified School District Board of Trustees approved the gang intervention counseling and career center, which also involves the efforts of the County Health Care Agency and the Capistrano-Laguna Beach Regional Occupational Program.

When Donald Garcia was 2 years old, his father was killed by Pacoima gang members at a San Fernando park. As a young boy, Garcia recalled, "I wanted to become a cop and arrest people who did bad things like what they did to my dad." Instead, he became a killer. For second-degree murder and other crimes, he spent half of his life -- 31 years -- in prisons, jails and juvenile halls.

An unavoidable side effect of the electoral process is that pet projects are often jeopardized when veteran officeholders are defeated. Unfortunately, the KYDS program, the west San Fernando Valley's largest private nonprofit gang intervention effort, faces just such a situation.

There was a logjam at the door of a makeshift schoolhouse one recent morning, because everyone was being scanned with a metal detector. There was a reason for that. Of the 50 students filing in for class, 45 were once gang members -- in at least 30 rival gangs. It was a swaggering crowd, with shaved heads and baggy pants, gold chains draped around thick necks. Many still used their street names: Brick. Q Ball. The students sat on metal folding chairs.

When battling street gangs across Los Angeles County, sheriff's deputies rely too heavily on suppression and not enough on gang intervention, according to a study released Monday. By not doing more to connect with the communities they police, the report found, sheriff's deputies are missing an opportunity to gain the public's trust. However, the report - put out by Merrick Bobb, special counsel to the county Board of Supervisors - acknowledged that crime rates inside sheriff's jurisdictions have fallen dramatically, and comparably to the areas patrolled by the LAPD, which more commonly uses gang interventionists.

The city of Los Angeles should create a standalone department of gang prevention and intervention instead of relying on the mayor's office to oversee anti-gang programs as it does now, according to a report released Monday. FOR THE RECORD: The headline on an earlier version of this article incorrectly said a report had called for Los Angeles' gang-intervention programs to be taken out of the governor's auspices. The report actually said the programs should be taken out of the mayor's auspices.

When battling street gangs across Los Angeles County, sheriff's deputies rely too heavily on suppression and not enough on gang intervention, according to a study released Monday. By not doing more to connect with the communities they police, the report found, sheriff's deputies are missing an opportunity to gain the public's trust. However, the report - put out by Merrick Bobb, special counsel to the county Board of Supervisors - acknowledged that crime rates inside sheriff's jurisdictions have fallen dramatically, and comparably to the areas patrolled by the LAPD, which more commonly uses gang interventionists.

Nearly three years after the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles first filed charges against Alex Sanchez, a well-known gang intervention worker, for racketeering and conspiracy to commit murder, those same federal prosecutors are now seeking to dismiss the case. Why? Prosecutors say the evidence they presented to a grand jury contained errors and omissions. Grand jurors relied on that evidence to indict Sanchez in 2009 for his role in allegedly plotting to murder a gang member. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office said he's prohibited from discussing anything pertaining to the grand jury proceedings.

The U.S. attorney's office has filed a motion to dismiss charges of racketeering and conspiracy to commit murder against a well-known anti-gang activist who authorities said was in league with one the nation's most violent street gangs. Key evidence presented to a grand jury in the 2009 indictment of Alex Sanchez, executive director of Homies Unidos, contained "errors" that made it necessary to dismiss the charges, federal prosecutors said in a court filing Monday. Although neither the prosecution nor the defense would specify what the errors were, court documents outline a case built heavily on recorded telephone conversations in which participants referred to each other by nicknames.

A veteran South Los Angeles gang intervention worker has been forced to resign from his agency and will no longer work the streets on behalf of City Hall after he was caught manipulating time cards, officials said Friday. Harry Warren, who bounced in and out of jail as a young man, had been a high-profile intervention worker and youth counselor for 20 years. He was forced to resign recently from Chapter Two, his nonprofit agency, after being confronted with evidence of financial impropriety, several officials confirmed.

Serious gang-related crime has tumbled 40% over the last three years in the troubled neighborhoods surrounding the sites of Summer Night Lights, Los Angeles' park program designed to curb violence, newly assembled police data show. This was the third summer that City Hall has run Summer Night Lights, offering recreational activities, mentoring and counseling programs, meals and other services at parks and public housing complexes. Launched in the summer of 2008, Summer Night Lights expanded to 24 sites this year.

Los Angeles County supervisorsTuesday awarded Homeboy Industries a $1.3-million contract, providing critically needed funding for the gang intervention program founded two decades ago by Father Gregory Boyle. Earlier this year, crushing financial problems forced Homeboy officials to lay off most employees . The organization, which uses jobs to draw young people away from gangs , had seen a steep decline in charitable contributions since the economic downturn even as demand for its programs soared.

Officials on Monday unveiled a federal bill that would create national standards and accountability for gang intervention workers as part of a Los Angeles-based effort to professionalize the growing and controversial field. The bill, which was introduced by U.S. Rep. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), is the first such national initiative to regulate intervention workers who act as liaisons between law enforcement and communities. Police and intervention workers have a long history of distrust, but authorities have come to rely on intervention workers for such matters as monitoring street gossip and preventing retaliatory shootings.

Top Los Angeles law enforcement and elected officials Tuesday acknowledged a recent rise in the number of killings in South Los Angeles and announced plans to bolster anti-gang activity in the area. Speaking at a news conference at the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Street station, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William J. Bratton said a task force consisting of officers from the LAPD, California Highway Patrol, the mayor's gang-intervention program and other agencies would be formed to focus on the swath of the city south of downtown.

The old friends were in their best suits, Ronald "Looney" Barron 's the color of caramel and Tommie "T-Top" Rivers' ribbed with pinstripes, a paisley pocket square peeking out just so. It was uncanny how their lives had mirrored each other's. They were born months apart, raised in the West Adams area. Both were good athletes, charismatic and bright, and both had squandered it all — rising to the level of "shot caller" in their respective gangs, turning their backs on their childhood friendship, then spending most of their 20s in prison.

David Martinez, pastor of Victory Outreach Church of the San Fernando Valley, whose ministry has affected the lives of thousands of former gang members, drug addicts and others over the last 35 years, has died. He was 67. Martinez, who had suffered a heart attack in December, died of a heart attack Sunday while vacationing with his family in Yosemite, said his wife, Faith. The Pacoima-born Martinez, a former gang member, founded Victory Outreach Church of the San Fernando Valley in 1975, after reaching out to the area's gang members and drug addicts.